Living with AI: Writing

This is a text automatically translated from Italian. If you appreciate our work and if you like reading it in your language, consider a donation to allow us to continue doing it and improving it.

The articles of Cassandra Crossing I'm under license CC BY-SA 4.0 | Cassandra Crossing is a column created by Marco Calamari with the "nom de plume" of Cassandra, born in 2005.

A new article by Cassandra on Artificial Intelligences!

This article was written on April 25, 2023 from Cassandra

Cassandra Crossing 537/ Living with AI: Writing

You cannot simply choose to live without AI, just as you cannot choose to live as if social media did not exist.

“Who has never succumbed to ChatGPT, having it create an outline on a topic, the summary of an article, a response of little value for an uninteresting email?”

Cassandra, poor thing, doesn't warn, she warns.

Cassandra is at your service, not as a digital assistant, but an organic 100%, not as an infallible algorithm but as a "best effort" in good faith.

It is for this reason that he will dedicate some "themed" remarks to the problem of living with AI.

However, it must be made clear from the beginning that “living with AI” does not only mean learning to understand if and when to use or not use AI, but above all where and when others are using it or have used it.

It doesn't just mean managing direct interactions with it, but living in a society and a world where its adoption is already underway and inevitable, as it was for fossil energy or nuclear fission.

And on which it will have a comparable impact.

Perhaps before climate change reduces us as a species, it could also have an impact on a planetary level, making us progress or regress.

Not even your favorite prophetess can tell you this.

But it will certainly transform the Infosphere into something we can only try to imagine today. And it won't be pretty.

So, this first part is intended for the most immediate and important topic of the use of ChatGPT-style pre-trained generative AI, i.e. the use in written communication.

Writing is probably the single invention that has most influenced us as the Homo genus; which appeared in a genome that manifested very strong gregarious and social habits, allowed these to become the engine of unstoppable cultural progress, replacing the use of intergenerational memory, which had insurmountable limits of accuracy and capacity.

It gave us the chance to develop a culture. And with the advent of digital an “Infosphere”. But let's not put too many irons in the fire.

Writing has allowed, in addition to the preservation of memory, the transmission of complex techniques, the creation of history and specialized cultural sectors, the birth of otherwise impossible art forms, the emergence of legal systems capable of being understood by all and to evolve with society.

But we read much, much more than we write. We create and change ourselves by choosing what to read (and what not to read).

We read about the crumbs that are part of the culture accumulated over the centuries, looking for the best and most interesting things.

We read and simultaneously develop a critical sense that helps us not only to understand, but also to evaluate the truth and context of a writing, to distinguish fantasy and history, to distinguish between history and history.

And then, sometimes, we put our hand (metaphorically) to the pen.

Sitting on the shoulders of a multitude of giants, we try to add something original to what we have read.

This means "writing".

But what if we have a generative AI do it?

If we make him write an "outline" and then we correct and refine it quickly with our refined intelligence, isn't it better?

Isn't it good to be more productive?

You have no idea how many undoubtedly intelligent and knowledgeable acquaintances have described this to me as the modus operandi practiced by them, by many only occasionally, but by too many even as a working method.

Let's leave aside for a moment the factual accuracy of what is produced, and let's instead ask ourselves about the news, the article, the novel or the treatise thus obtained.

Was it achieved faster? Certainly yes.

Is it current, factual, compelling or innovative?

Hey, I asked you a question!

No response came. And not even Cassandra can give it to you.

These words, written on "command" by an AI, do they come from you?

Do they represent your thoughts, the discharges between your neurons, phylogenetically constructed and culturally programmed?

Cassandra has many doubts about it.

This is not the duality of the ancient diatribe between painters and photographers on the adherence to reality and the speed of production of the new method.

It's not even about the now widespread use of computers to write texts, correct typing errors, grammar, syntax, then lay them out, illustrate them, integrate them with notes and references. These are still aids, means to go faster and do better, means that probably do not influence you that much, do not influence what you consider "your thinking".

But doesn't "starting" from something written by an AI, set and developed outside your mind, which simply wrote a request to a prompt, affect you?

It is very similar to an explorer who spins a top to decide the direction of his journey. Best wishes to him!

Who controls the outcome of your intellectual efforts to add something to the Infosphere, if AI works with you and sets your work in total opacity?

Are you really capable of "correcting and refining" in such a way that the writing represents your thoughts and your will?

And how much does the functioning of AI itself matter?

How important is its internal mechanics?

How important is the will of those who created it compared to yours?

No answers today, just questions. Strange for a prophetess.

No, it's not a bout of laziness on Cassandra's part, rather it's her inability to deal with such a huge problem. So big that you can't even point your finger at it.

But it's late, and today this is the best that Cassandra can give.

Marco Calamari

Join communities